Three Days a Week
When I got home from a trip Thursday night last week I thought about what I wanted for supper and decided, "Pizza!" More specifically, I wanted good pizza. 😅 In Vegas there was plenty of pizza that was poor. Or wildly too expensive. Or both. Anyway, there's a great by-the-slice joint near my house. It has kind of funky hours, though, so I looked it up quickly online to see if it was open. Bingo!
When I got to the restaurant, I saw this:
The good news was they were still open Thursday evening. The bad news is they've reduced their schedule even further than what it was several months ago. Now they're only open 3 days a week. WTF?
And it's not even 3 full days a week. It's more like one day and two half days.
Again, WTF?
When this business first opened several years ago it was an expansion by a local entrepreneur who had another pizzeria across town. I'll call him Kirk. Kirk was a good guy, cared for his workers, worked hard to run a small business, etc. Kirk took a business partner in the expansion who I believe ultimately didn't pull his weight. (The partner was a techie who wanted to keep his day job for the money while running a pizzeria as a lifestyle job. It didn't work.) The partner left, and Kirk spun off this restaurant to focus on the original. Now the new owners don't seem to be so savvy.
Why not so savvy? It's because the restaurant says "costs" are the reason it has cut its hours. That's actually a double WTF. It argues to me the people running the business may not understand how to run a small business. "Costs" are only half the equation. The other half is "revenues", and there are no revenues being made the majority of the week when they're closed!
You might notice that typically people who are building a small business work long hours to get it going. I remember a newspaper article from years ago when a local businessman was asked about his long hours. "You work 16 hours a day," the writer observed. "Why so long?" "Rent is 24 hours," he said.
This restaurant is now a cooperative; the workers run it! IIt kind of makes sense then that the owners- a crowd of mostly 20-somethings with little to no experience running a business- kind of suck at it. That's too bad because they do still make good pizza. But I doubt their business will be around at all in another year or two unless they hire someone with a clue.
When I got to the restaurant, I saw this:
The good news was they were still open Thursday evening. The bad news is they've reduced their schedule even further than what it was several months ago. Now they're only open 3 days a week. WTF?
And it's not even 3 full days a week. It's more like one day and two half days.
Again, WTF?
When this business first opened several years ago it was an expansion by a local entrepreneur who had another pizzeria across town. I'll call him Kirk. Kirk was a good guy, cared for his workers, worked hard to run a small business, etc. Kirk took a business partner in the expansion who I believe ultimately didn't pull his weight. (The partner was a techie who wanted to keep his day job for the money while running a pizzeria as a lifestyle job. It didn't work.) The partner left, and Kirk spun off this restaurant to focus on the original. Now the new owners don't seem to be so savvy.
Why not so savvy? It's because the restaurant says "costs" are the reason it has cut its hours. That's actually a double WTF. It argues to me the people running the business may not understand how to run a small business. "Costs" are only half the equation. The other half is "revenues", and there are no revenues being made the majority of the week when they're closed!
You might notice that typically people who are building a small business work long hours to get it going. I remember a newspaper article from years ago when a local businessman was asked about his long hours. "You work 16 hours a day," the writer observed. "Why so long?" "Rent is 24 hours," he said.
This restaurant is now a cooperative; the workers run it! IIt kind of makes sense then that the owners- a crowd of mostly 20-somethings with little to no experience running a business- kind of suck at it. That's too bad because they do still make good pizza. But I doubt their business will be around at all in another year or two unless they hire someone with a clue.